Life was good. It had been a month since our son, the youngest of our three children and the last one at home, had moved out of the house to go to college in another state. My wife was having a slightly difficult emotional time adjusting to the empty nest, but her trouble was mostly finding things to do with herself that weren’t focused on the kids, and nothing nearly like the “syndrome” you see described as life-altering. I, on the other hand, simply felt relieved. She and I were doing the social and cultural things we’d talked about doing for years and hadn’t had time for while the rush of child-raising and chauffeuring and chaperoning and homework and activities had us pressed to the wall. As an example, this early Friday evening in the early fall, we’d come downtown for an outdoor classical music concert at the city’s main park.

The orchestra was on stage at some distance from where we’d set up our lawn chairs, blanket and ice chest, and even though we were near the back of the gathered throng, we could see and hear perfectly well while we enjoyed our white wine, fruit, cheese and crackers. I’m not a white-wine-guy, so I was nursing my drink, while Cindy, my wife, was about two-and-a-half sheets to the wind. That’s no criticism: I wanted her to enjoy herself, and relax, and live some of the life she’d missed while she was tending children and dealing with a husband who’d spent long hours at the office and thirty-plus days a year on the road. I was driving tonight. I let her drink.

As the orchestra began its second-to-last piece before intermission, I started looking around for the bathrooms or port-a-potties. I glanced over to the left, across Cindy’s shoulder, where I remembered them having been the last time I was at the park (probably when I was myself in college), but saw nothing. “Other side”, she said, knowing that I was hunting a toilet facility without my having said so much as a word; one of the comforting rhythms and a part of the evolutionary process of married life, that ability to read one’s mate. I smiled, and looked the other way for my relief. Before I found what I was looking for, I found something I absolutely was NOT looking for: Amber. I didn’t know her name at that point, had never met her or ever even seen her before. I know now that her name is Amber, but only because of what followed that turn of my head.

She was sitting on the bare ground with five female friends of roughly her same age, which I estimated at somewhere in the range of high school. I’ve never been good at guessing people’s ages, and now in my mid-forties, my guessing just plain stinks. But they looked the part, dressed the part, and were all very obviously trying to appear older than they were — drinking beer-truck beer that somebody else had surely bought for them, and Amber and one other girl were smoking cigarettes — so I took high school as a good estimate. Amber was sitting facing the stage, in profile to me, looking at another girl whose back was to the orchestra, with the remainder of the group loosely encircling them. As soon as I’d caught sight of her, though, she looked over and noticed me looking at her, and she smiled quickly, before returning to her conversation.

I couldn’t have told you then what any of the other girls looked like, nor could I tell you now, because Amber captured my attention and I simply could not look away. She wasn’t pageant-beautiful, but she was a lovely, lithe, little blonde, with A-cup breasts that probably wouldn’t get much bigger as she matured. She was thin, small-framed, but not skinny, and shapely legs that were stretched out in front of her and crossed over one another. No tan. Girls don’t tan like they used to. She was wearing a halter top and a purposely-ragged denim skirt, announcing the curves of her body and of her hips in particular; not overtly sexual in her attire, but still sexy because of her posture, her obvious sassiness and the way she occupied space. But the way she was sitting and laughing and smoking and talking all just grabbed me and wouldn’t turn me loose. As I said at the beginning, I had not been looking for Amber or anyone like her, hadn’t thought of any woman other than my wife (beyond the occasional passing ogle), and would have told you thirty seconds before, if you’d asked, that I had no serious interest in anybody other than Cindy. Now, I couldn’t take my eyes off of Amber.

“You better get over there now, before all the other men beat you to that.” I snapped my head back around after Cindy spoke this, fearful that she’d caught me staring at Amber and knew I was both attracted and excited — completely inappropriately attracted and excited — by what I saw. You can imagine my relief when I saw she was still looking at the stage and had assumed that I was just looking at the bathrooms. I turned back toward Amber, noticed the fancy bricked outhouses fifty yards beyond her, and then reset my gaze on her, probably about fifteen yards away from me. As I did so, she turned her face again in my direction, smiled broadly, then pursed her lips and exhaled smoke directly at me. And then she held up her cigarette hand, and waved. I hadn’t seen her inhale, so either the exhale was pure coincidence, or she planned to nab me eyeing her.

Knowing I was busted, I got up from my chair, made a pretense of adjusting its position, looked around our blanket for no reason other than to avoid looking at Amber, and just generally fidgeted, being nervous unlike I’d been since I was in high school. “Stop wasting time and just go over there!”, was the advice I got from my still-oblivious wife. I turned back toward the bathrooms, intending to look over Amber’s head and at the facility, but when I did that I saw that she, too, was standing, and looking at me. And still smiling. As I looked at her, feeling as though I was being pulled into her orbit, she took another drag on her cigarette, and without exhaling took another even-deeper drag, and then, without ever taking her gaze from mine, tilted her had back slightly and in a tight stream began exhaling smoke up into the sky. She slowly tilted her head back downward until the smoke was coming directly toward me. Once she’d expelled it all from her lungs, she turned and nodded for me to follow her. “You snooze, you lose”, said my wife, encouraging my improper thoughts about this young girl and encouraging me to hurry after her, without realizing she was doing either. On shaky legs, I began my Amber journey, stepping away from my wife and following the powerful gravitational pull of a stranger.

Amber had said nothing to her friends. I knew that because I walked in their direction, passed their spot on the ground, and elicited not so much as a glance from any of them. Girls that age, had they known what Amber had done, and what she had gotten me to do, would have been giggling themselves to the point of hyperventilation, and to the point of humiliating me for chasing after a child. I know that because Cindy and I have two daughters, both now in their twenties, and some things — particularly teenaged girls — simply never change.

Trying to appear nonchalant, and trying to give Cindy no hint of my destination, if she happened to look away from the bandstand, I walked on toward the bathrooms, peeked to the right of them and saw Amber approach an oak tree and then turn and motion with her hand for me to join her. I looked around once more, made sure that neither Cindy nor anyone else was tracking my movements, turned at the facility and walked over to Amber. She pulled another cigarette from the bag slung over her shoulder and put it to her mouth. “Hi”, I said, casually, trying not to seem as lecherly as I felt at the moment, having surreptitiously followed a teenaged girl away from a concert and behind a large tree and out of sight of all but a few of the people there. “I’m Hank”, I told her, “Hank McElliott”, expecting similar identification from her, and hoping for some kind of small talk that would break up the iceberg that my ship was steaming toward. She smiled a little wider, and I saw that she had freckles that very much suggested youthfulness and vigor, and that were a lovely companion for her face and for her long, thick medium-blonde hair, with those wide, bright, banded highlights that young women were wearing.

She was five-foot-one, smaller than I’d originally thought, and in the fading light of early evening, she now also looked younger than I’d originally thought, but that was something I tried to put completely out of my mind. “How are you tonight?”, I asked, resuming my quest for a prelude to whatever was going to happen next. She adjusted the unlit cigarette in her mouth, doing so using only her lips, which I now saw had some sort of bright gloss on them that made her look like she was glowing from within her mouth. The movement of her lips sent a heightened electric current through me, and made me realize that I already had some kind of electric charge coursing around in my veins and synapses.

Still not responding, she reached into her bag, pulled out her lighter and handed it immediately to me. Taking the hint, I flicked it, held it to her, chin-high, and allowed her to lean into it and draw the flame into the tip of the cigarette. She drew deeply, tilted her head back a bit, looked into my eyes, held the smoke in her lungs for what seemed an eternity . . . and then exhaled. Right at me. Directly at my face.

The effect was mesmerizing. I felt weak. Not because of the smell or the smoke, but because she had just engulfed me in a substance that had come from inside her body. It was like a spell. I tried to regroup, tried to analyze what was happening and establish some control over things, but failed at all that. All I could do was look at this creature standing before me and hope that she wouldn’t get bored and leave, or realize that I was doing something like stalking her and leave, or think I was a pervert and leave, or see that I was too old for her and leave, or just leave. I wanted her to stay right where she was. In front of me. And, thankfully, she did that.

“What’s your name?” I tried again to make some form of conversational connection with her, to no avail. She leaned back against the oak tree, took back her lighter and put it away, took another drag of her cigarette and blew smoke at me again, smiled again, and looked even more sure of herself. I wasn’t so lucky. I felt my self-control steadily continuing to slip away from me, and I even inadvertently reached into her smoke stream as if to catch as much as I could. I didn’t know why. She uttered a little laugh, which came with small residual puffs of smoke from her mouth and nose, and held up her cigarette toward me, like a magic wand. I took one more shot: “How old are you?”, I asked, not because I cared anymore, but just because it came to my mind: I was just making something like social noises with my mouth so it wouldn’t be so obvious that I was chasing a young girl, that I was attracted to a young girl, and that I was aroused by a young girl.

That was the first moment that I admitted my arousal even to myself. “I am aroused by a young girl”. This was a sickness, I knew somewhere in the recesses of my mind, an urge that they jailed men for if they were foolish enough to actually act on, though the thought process was fully and completely interrupted by my libido. “I am aroused by a young girl”, the thought crept back. “I am aroused by THIS young girl.” I watched her smoking, and she seemed to be doing that in an increasingly sensual and sexual way, with the certain knowledge that I was responding to it. I couldn’t resist watching. And the fact that she wasn’t speaking to me made me even more excited. And helpless. She had established control while we were still back at our seats, and now she was just expanding it. She knew it. I knew it. And she knew I knew it.

She opened her bag again, removed another cigarette, and lit it off the one she was smoking, stubbing the first out on the bark of the tree and tossing it away on the ground. I looked at the spot where it landed, and then felt her hand on my face, returning my gaze to hers, making certain that I saw her exhale the first drag off the new cigarette. I then felt her hand on mine, as she stepped away from the base of the tree, and guided me to the place she had just occupied, like a circling dance step. She put her hand on my chest and gently pushed me back until I was leaning on the tree as she had been. Having her touch me, first on my face and then on my hand and then on my chest, all within seconds, doubled and then tripled the electric charge running through me, and caused my heart to begin to race. “I am aroused by THIS young girl”, the thought repeated itself in my head. And then the words “THIS young girl” began to echo inside my head.

For several seconds, I could think of nothing to say, though I tried. Finally, I arrived at something I’d already used, because the excitement and arousal had left me nearly without active thought, and increasingly unstable. “How old are you?”, I asked again, for lack of something better or newer, as the echo continued apace.

She smiled coyly at me, realizing how horribly I was struggling, and said “I’ll answer that question after we’ve been fucking for two months.” To underscore it, and knowing the effect it would have on me, she immediately repeated the last four words: “fucking for two months”. And then, just one: “fucking”.

I had the thought at that moment that I might actually cum in my pants, without any external physical stimulation or contact. She hadn’t used the phrase “been dating”, or “been friends”, or “known each other”, or “been together”. No, she was using the f-word and telling me that it would not only happen but continue. Under other circumstances, I’d have been horrified, or politely begged off, or recognized the jeopardy I was in, or turned and run. Under these circumstances, I longed for the two months to begin, and for there to be an unending series of renewals. I was vaguely aware that I was married, and that my wife was somewhere nearby, but those were fading thoughts in light of this Amber development. Still, at this point I had no idea of the girl’s name, or her age.

My wife. My wife “was somewhere nearby”. A brief flash of my reality gurgled up from the depths of my conscience as that thought registered. I leaned away from the tree and turned my head around toward the crowd to look for Cindy. I’d lost my sense of time, and I couldn’t recall if I’d been gone for a couple of minutes or something much longer. Before I could remember where we’d been sitting and visually sort through the people to find my wife, I felt the small hand on my chest again, urging me back to the tree. “Don’t worry: I can see her, and she’s not looking at us.” They say that the human mind can’t actually hold more than one thought at a time, but in that instant I had five. (1) I was amazed that this young girl — and the phrase “I am aroused by THIS young girl” leapt back up at this moment — could read my mind just like my wife, but without having ever met me, and respond to my unasked question. (2) I was comforted that this young girl (same echo thought) knew that I had a wife, knew that the wife was an issue, and was taking care to avoid the wife seeing us, and I was further excited that she was so eager to connect with a married man without caring even a little about his marital status: I had the collateral thought that I was probably not the first married man she’d had. (3) I was thrilled by her touch; this time more of a caress than a direction. (4) I realized that I adored the sound of her voice. And (5) I wanted to hear that voice, and feel that touch, for the long term.

As she continued to look over to Cindy, she left her hand on my chest. It was just her fingertips, really, though she gradually flattened her palm against my sternum. It was her left hand with which she was touching me; I remember it vividly. In her right hand, she held her cigarette, and was leaning slightly to her right and around the side of the tree, making sure Cindy wasn’t looking or moving, and that we weren’t attracting any unfortunate attention. She leaned back in front of me, leaving her hand on my chest and massaging it in very small circles. I looked down at her pale hand and watched it do its work, drawing me deeper into whatever spell she was casting. It was a beautiful thing to see, and it was an electric thing to feel.

With the hand in which she held the cigarette, she reached up — I was over a foot taller than her — and touched my chin again, raising my eyes to meet hers. The smile was gone, replaced by a serious, penetrating, captivating look that simultaneously steadied me and amped up the electricity. With our eyes locked on each others, she took two more deep drags on her cigarette in rapid succession, surrounded me in her exhaled smoke, and then dropped the butt to the ground at her feet, where she used one to stamp it out. As she began to return her eyes to mine, she paused at the midway point. Something had caught her attention.

By the time I’d processed her movements and realized what she must’ve seen, she had slipped her left hand over and down to my hip, belt-level, and with the hand she’d been holding the cigarette in, she reached toward me. And cupped that right hand over the front of my pants, and over my erect cock. She stopped there, just looking, not moving. My cock was jumping, throbbing, reaching, aching. And she knew it. She didn’t say it, but she didn’t have to. She knew, because she could feel it. And she knew because, despite having only been near me for moments, she knew me. She continued to look down at my fly, and to hold her hand over my penis. She shook her head from side to side, slowly, and I heard her breathe, “Oh . . . fuck”, ever so quietly. I don’t know if she meant it as an expression of appreciation, but that’s absolutely the way I took it.

I tried as best I could not to press back against her hand, hoping to maintain some control, but my body and my desire for Amber (“THIS young girl” rang out again in my mind) got the better of me, and I moved my hips forward to increase the pressure against her hand. She didn’t move her hand, or make a grip, or do anything. Then, she restored eye contact with me, retaining the deeply serious look she’d adopted. After making sure she had my full attention, she said, “I have a rule.” I was just dying to know what her rule was, hoping it was a fun rule, or at least not a rule that would end what she was doing to me at that very moment. I wanted to ask about her rule, beg her to tell me, respond in some encouraging way or adult way. But I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t even breathe. I’d lost the power of speech and of respiration, all in instant. So I just stood there, pressing my cock, through my pants, against the hand of a female I suddenly wanted more than any woman in the world, hoping she’d tell me her rule, and that it would lead to more contact, not less.

“And my rule is this”, she continued, as I stood, not breathing. “If I make it hard”, she said, and paused only briefly, “it’s mine.” With that, she squeezed the shaft of my cock with her fingertips, just slightly, and without motion or stroke or pump. She just squeezed, all while looking into my eyes and down to my soul. And I exploded. I had never cum so suddenly or so much or with so little contact in my life. I felt as though I was soaking my underwear and the front of my pants with one continuous stream of semen. Amber looked back down at the front of my pants, and again said softly, “Oh . . . fuck”. And I kept coming, more than I ever had before: jet after jet after jet after jet, being pumped into my clothes. “Shit”, she said, “SHIT! I can fucking smell it through your fucking pants! You fucking cum like a motherfucking MAN!!”

As the throbbing began to ebb, she leaned closer to me, got more of her hand around my shaft, albeit with the additional layering of pants and underwear, though she was gripping a wrapped cock in her hand, to be sure. She strained up toward my face, whispering rapidly, “Don’t go soft, don’t go soft, don’t go soft”, as if the request would be enough to save a rapidly emptying dick from flaccidity. With her free hand, the left one, she reached down between us — her body wasn’t pressed hard against mine, though there was no space between us — and cupped my balls. The look on her face was pleading and imploring. Again, “Don’t go soft, don’t go soft, don’t go soft”, she asked, and she worked the shaft and balls together in some way I’d never experienced and can’t now describe to you. I don’t know what she was doing, but it was heavenly.

To my utter amazement, but not at all to hers, I never lost my erection. Not even for a second. As she leaned closer to me, my cock in her right hand, my balls in her left, all with the impediment of cotton, she went to work. As she squeezed my sack, she pumped my dick, all between our bodies. If anyone had looked our way, they’d have seen a young girl leaning up against an older man, maybe whispering to him, but our arms weren’t entwined or around one another, and all the action was with her hands hidden between us. It would have been an odd sight, but not a patently sexual one, unless they happened to notice that my eyes were rolled back in my head, a sure sign of physical ecstasy. I tried to put my arms around her back, to push myself closer and harder against her, but she said “No” in a way that I took as serious, and then “Just feel what I’m doing to you” in a way that I couldn’t resist. I bucked twice and came again. Just like before. And even more.

I was close to toppling over from weakness and exhaustion. I looked down at her as the orgasm began losing power, and she began shaking her head, silently. I don’t know how, but I knew she was telling me yet again, “Don’t go soft”, without saying a word, because she’d returned to that indescribable manual manipulation that she’d used after my last eruption. “I don’t think I ca . . .”, I tried to say, knowing how weak I was, but she cut me off with “Feel it”, and so I went with the flow. And the flow took me back where I had been: erect and ready.

Amber smiled at her own success, adjusted her grip on my cock, still secreted between us, and held her position. She looked around the tree again, quickly, and back at the crowds near the bathrooms, and the thought suddenly found its way to me again that I had a wife, that she was here, and that she was not far away. That realization caused me to actually jump, and to try to look around the tree as well, to find Cindy and see if I’d been discovered. With her left elbow, Amber shoved me back against the tree, never loosening her grip on the cock. She looked up at me, saying sternly, “I don’t want you thinking about her; I only want you thinking about me.”

I did as I was told, and she leaned even closer to me, tightened her grip on my privates even more, looked into my eyes, and went back to work on my manhood. Whispering again, she said, “I want you to give me one more of those, and I want you to fucking empty that sack out completely. I don’t want THAT fucking bitch”, she nodded in Cindy’s direction, “getting even one drop of what’s meant for me.” I nodded my understanding and agreement. I didn’t want Cindy getting a drop of what was meant for Amber either.

The effect of what she was doing between our bodies and between my legs was incredible. Really unbelievable. I couldn’t imagine how a girl so young could have such knowledge and skill, and such awareness of men. She was truly extraordinary. Once again, I didn’t last long. This time, part of the reason for my limited duration was fatigue, but the larger part was what she said to me, and how she said it. Looking at me from a foot below, with her little hands working my cock and balls, she said “Close your eyes”. I did that. She said, as she performed her magic, “Now imagine that you’re deep, deep, deep inside my pussy, and you’re slow-fucking me”, she moved her fingertips carefully and deliberately up and down my shaft, “and that I’m working your balls like this while you fuck”, as she massaged the sack. “And then”, she said, when she’d allowed me ample time to think of actually being inside that tiny body, and when she realized that I was about to cum again, she lowered her whisper even more, saying sweetly, “and then . . . you . . . knock . . . me . . . up.”

All at once, a peace came over me. I was still, and I barely moved. I began to orgasm, powerfully and forcefully, and in what seemed to be gallons, with my cock flowing and pulsing and flowing more. And then while I was still in her hands, within the wrap of clothing, I came yet again. And then again. As I opened my eyes and found her looking up at me, our eyes locked, and she held my cock until the thrusts had all subsided and my pants and underwear were indeed soaked through and through and I was exhausted and ruined and totally lost in her. She knew that what happened — a series of volcanic orgasms inside a body that looks outwardly calm — was not something that ever happened to men. Except this time it did. I took a deep breath, found my voice, cupped her face in my hands, looked even more deeply into her eyes, and said “I love you.” She nodded, smiled only a little, and said “I love you, too”.

She looked around again, checking for danger, slipped the fingertips of her left hand, not visible to the crowd, inside the waistband of my pants, and down to where my spend was being absorbed into my clothes, scooped two fingers into it, withdrew her hand, and licked the juice off her fingers. “Mine”, she said, with my cum in her mouth. And she swallowed. She was showing me that she was a swallower.

I leaned down to kiss her, to put my arms around her, but she pulled back, looked around the tree, and said, “We can’t kiss here, or look like we’re sexing, because your wife is here, and so are my parents.” Despite the obvious facts of biology, and of life, it honestly hadn’t occurred to me that she had parents, much less that they might be present. Reality tried to force its way back into my thoughts, and to turn them to Cindy and to Amber’s parents, but I resisted it. “This can’t end here”, I said to her, “it just can’t.” I tried to collect my thoughts, knowing that this might well end any second, if my wife or her parents came looking, and I pressed on.

“Look, we have to be quick about this, but only for tonight: every other time we’re together, we won’t be hurried. Not ever.” I reached into my pocket, pulled out my wallet and took out a business card. “This is tacky, I know, and I’m sorry, but it’s fastest way to make this happen. This has all my information on it, everything, and I’m giving it to you and trusting that you’ll use it to contact me, not have me arrested, because I think this is more than sex, and I think YOU think it’s more than sex, too. I won’t ask for your number, and even though I asked before, I won’t ask for your name, or your age: I’ll let the decision about what happens next be up to you.” She had already lit another cigarette, and was smoking it in her usual sensual way, and had returned to her original silent state, though she was looking at me, paying close attention. I said, “We have to get back to the people we came here with, but this can’t end here. It just can’t.” I thought the repetition might assure her of my sincerity.

She stood quietly, finishing her cigarette, thinking. She looked around the side of the tree again, and then back at me, assessing. “I’m a lot prettier than your wife.” She uttered it as a declaration, but I recognized it as a yes-or-no question, and I answered it. Truthfully. “Yes, you are”, I said. “And I’m a lot sexier”, she continued. Another question, with the same answer, but which I expanded, for accuracy. “Jesus, you’re sexier than any woman I’ve ever been with and I’ve been with a lot of women.” “I make you cum a LOT”, she said proudly, to which I replied, following her train of comparative thought, “More than my wife, or any other woman, ever”. “And you love the way I smoke.” I hadn’t really fixed on that as an independent thought, though I knew it was one of the things that had initially caught my attention, and was something that kept my focus exclusively on her when she was near me. Giving it more thought, now, I realized that she was right. “You’re a very, very sexy smoker, yes, I admit it: I do love watching you smoke.” And then the power shot. She said, “I’m way, way younger than your wife.”

I probably should just have said yes and let it go, because it was so clearly true, and then I might have remained ignorant of how far I’d gone and how much risk I was assuming. But in my giddiness, I stepped out just a little too far. “Baby, you’re younger than all three of my children.” “How old are they?”, she asked, right away. “My son is eighteen, and the girls are twenty-one and twenty-four.” She pondered this, glanced back around our tree, and looked back at me. “I know I said I’d tell you later in our relationship, but I think you need to know that I’m ten years younger than her”, she said, and I nearly collapsed: even though I didn’t know which “her” she was talking about, I knew she wasn’t talking about Cindy, and there was no math that could be applied to the girls’ equation that produced good results for me. “Please, dear God in heaven, tell me you aren’t elev . . .”. “Fourteen”, she said. And then, sensing my shock, and attempting to dismiss it, looked at me with that serious look, and added, “I’m fourteen, and I’m going to take you away from your wife.” It wasn’t a threat, or a plea. It was just a matter of fact.

I stood still, not sure what to say. I couldn’t tell her that that wasn’t going to happen, because I actually was in love with her, and I considered what she said possible: stranger things have actually happened. I vacillated, waited, hoped for inspiration or guidance, but none came. At least, none came until she smiled again and said “Don’t worry: I’m not a psycho, and I’m not going to boil any bunnies in your kitchen.” We both laughed, her at her humor, and me with relief. “But I really AM going to take you away from her”, nodding once again toward the spot where Cindy, I hoped, still sat. “That thing I said before you came for me the last time?” She was referring to me knocking her up. “That wasn’t just sex-talk, or a fantasy: it was a vision. I have those. I have a lot of them. I never tell my friends, because they would think I’m a nut-job, but I see things. I saw that happening for us in the future. When I turn fifteen next summer, you’ll take me off my birth control and we’ll start trying to get pregnant. You’re going to cheat on your wife, constantly, and only with me. We’re going to have a baby, and I’ll know the exact time right before it happens, and I’ll get you to fuck me and cum in me, and I’ll tell you to do it and that’s when you’ll give me our baby. And then later your wife will find out and she’ll see how happy I make you and she’ll see what a wonderful baby we have and she’ll leave. Until she leaves you’ll just cheat and cheat and cheat. I’ll never do anything to make you leave her or to harm her or to make her leave with threats or anything. She’ll just see how much prettier I am than her and how much sexier I am than her and how much better I am for you than she is and she’ll go away. She’ll be sad, but we’ll be happy. When I turn seventeen, I won’t need my parents’ permission to get married anymore, and you and I will get married on my birthday. By then, we’ll already have at least two children — more, if you decide you like me pregnant and you want to keep knocking me up before we get married — and we’ll be a happy family. I see it. I know it.”

My head was spinning. I truly did feel like I was in a spell, and that I was in the presence of some kind of modern witch: a non-threatening one, but one that could control the mind and the future. One that could make having illegitimate children sound incredibly sexy. Cindy was here, at the concert, and by now was probably wondering what the hell had happened to me at the bathroom. I noticed that the orchestra was playing, so I assumed they were beyond intermission even though I’d not been aware of the break, and my wife was likely worried or mad or both, and here I was, pledging my love to and doing family planning with a fourteen-year-old girl — an amazingly gifted fourteen-year-old girl with a knowledge of sex and an ability to please men not possessed by a tenth of one percent of all adult females — that I’d known, literally, for only a matter of minutes. And whose name I didn’t even know yet. I’d told her mine, given her my card, and asked hers, but not gotten it. She gave me a puzzled look, laughed a tiny, ironic laugh, and responded to my unexpressed thought. “It’s ‘Amber’”, she said. “My name is ‘Amber’. And pretty soon, it’s going to be ‘Amber McElliott’. I can see it.” And when she’d said it, I could see it, too.